Government Motors. It’s what lots of folks called GM after the bailout, and it’s a term that many used when casting insults at the Chevrolet Volt, the company’s “Car of the Future.” Some even joked that Barack Obama himself had designed the plug-in hybrid hatchback, and that it was an absolute waste of taxpayer dollars. And yet, on the other side of the aisle, folks who actually bought the Volt adored it. “I haven’t used a drop of gas in three months. I actually have to fire up my engine just to keep the gas from going bad!” is something you’ll hear from a typical flannel-wearing, granola-eating Volt owner. So what’s the deal with this highly contentious Financial Crisis-Era electrified car? Was it as bad as the haters say, as good as the owners say, and why the hell did it die out? I had a chance to drive a Volt that someone traded in to Galpin Ford; here’s what it was like.
The Chevy Volt is dead, and it’s not hard to make the argument that it really never lived up to its potential. It was a great idea — a vehicle that offered 35 miles of fully-electric range when the 16 kWh battery was fully charged, and another 300+miles when the 9.3-gallon fuel tank was full. That tank fed a 1.4-liter naturally aspirated four-cylinder engine mounted transversely under the hood of the Volt, and though its primary purpose was to act as a generator to keep the battery charged enough to propel the car using the electric motor, under certain high-speed conditions, it could actually couple to the driveline to help propel the car directly.
This latter function was controversial when the media found out about it. “Wait, hold on. Isn’t this a series hybrid?” people wondered. “Why is the gas engine actually powering the car?” Stories like Autoblog’s “GM: Yes, the Volt’s gas engine can power the wheels” started spreading across the internet. Here’s a quote from it:
General Motors kept saying its “extended range electric vehicle (ER-EV)” was just that: an electric car with a gasoline-powered generator on board. Guess what?
GM has now confirmed, late in the game, that the Volt can, in some situations, use the ICE to power the wheels. This came to light after Motor Trend was allowed to test the car for three long drives and discovered:
However of particular interest, when going above 70 mph in charge sustaining mode, and the generator gets coupled to the drivetrain, the gas engine participates in the motive force. GM says the engine never drives the wheels all by itself, but will participate in this particular situation in the name of efficiency, which is improved by 10 to 15 percent.
This is exactly the opposite of what GM has been saying for years
This was just one of the Volt’s many controversies after it debuted for the 2011 model year, championed by an Obama administration that used it as proof for the incredibly forward-thinking innovations that General Motors was delivering thanks to a taxpayer-funded bailout.
Another controversy occurred when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ran a side-pole crash test. Here, let me show you what happened next:
Yikes! Here’s a small snippet from NHTSA’s report on the incident:
On Monday June 6, 2011, NHTSA was notified by personnel at MGA Research, Inc. (MGA) that a fire event had occurred over the previous weekend and had been discovered by laboratory personnel on that Monday morning. The laboratory provided details of the vehicles involved in the event which included the Chevrolet Volt subjected to an NCAP pole test three weeks earlier on May 12th.
[…]
NHTSA contracted with a battery and fire expert, Hughes Associates, to investigate the origin and cause of the fire. The initial forensic inspection was conducted on June 13-14, 2011 at the MGA facility. In July 2011, Hughes Associates preliminary findings indicated that the fire incident at MGA most likely originated in the Chevrolet Volt.
[…]
The inspection of the crash damage to the Volt revealed that the transverse stiffener located under the driver’s seat had penetrated the tunnel section of the battery compartment, damaged the lithium-ion battery, and ruptured the battery’s liquid cooling system. Review of the crash test photographs and video confirmed that battery coolant leaked from the battery compartment. Hughes Associates concluded ultimately that the damage to some of the Volt’s battery pack cells and electric shorting precipitated the fire.
Note that the report goes on to mention that NHTSA crashed six Volts and assessed battery condition. Two batteries ended up catching fire:
From NHTSA:
In summary, six tests were performed on Volt battery packs to isolate potential factors involved in the MGA vehicle fire. Of the six tests, two batteries caught fire (Tests 2 and 5), one battery experienced a short arcing event with sparks and flames (Test 3), one battery showed signs of heating at the connector (Test 4), one battery had no test activity other than a slow discharge of one cell group
Naturally, NHTSA contacted GM and let them know that this was not okay, and GM came up with a solution:
In November 2011, because of the vehicle fire and subsequent testing, NHTSA opened a defect investigation (PE 11-037) on the Chevrolet Volt. The agency rarely opens a defect investigation without any data from real-world incidents. By taking this uncommon step, NHTSA sought to ensure the safety of the driving public with emerging EV technology. As a result, GM proposed a potential change (field fix) to mitigate intrusion of the transverse stiffener into the battery. NHTSA observed the installation of the proposed reinforcement into a 2012 production Chevrolet Volt and the vehicle was then shipped to MGA in Wisconsin where an NCAP type side-pole test was performed on December 22, 2011. The vehicle was monitored for three weeks. There was no intrusion into the battery compartment, no leakage of coolant, and no post impact fire observed.
It was a PR nightmare that GM and the Obama administration didn’t need, especially given how unpopular the Volt already was among many Americans.
But the Volt was actually a good car, adored by those who drove it, including people who once piloted General Motors’ biggest PR flub, the vehicle that spawned the Movie Who Killed The Electric Car, the GM EV1:
In fact, GM executive Bob Lutz, who really started the development of the Volt well before Obama made it to office, referred to the Volt as a “reputational adjustment exercise” meant to improve how the world saw The General, which is why it’s so ironic that, to many, it did exactly the opposite.
But again, it was a good car, and it was well engineered. A T-shaped battery pack sitting under the rear bench and along the spine of the car was filled with liquid-cooled prismatic lithium-ion battery cells. A charge-port located on the driver’s side fender filled up those cells:
The battery then sends juice to an inverter to convert electricity from DC to AC to power the 111kw (~150 hp) electric motor, which feeds a planetary gear set that’s part of the “Voltec electric drive system.”
This drive unit is exceptionally complex, and actually features a 74 horsepower (55 kW) generator that acts as a secondary electric motor to propel the vehicle.
Here’s a slightly more translucent one version of the above shot:
The short of it is that, during normal EV-only operation, a clutch locks the electric motor to the ring gear, creating a 7:1 gear ratio between that primary motor and the differential output. In other circumstances, like at high speeds, the generator will assist the traction motor. If the car runs out of charge, the gas motor will run the generator to power the main traction motor, and, in rare cases (as mentioned before), the gas motor will run the generator while that generator is coupled with the traction motor, and thus the gas engine will be mechanically connected to the wheels.
Here’s a breakdown of how it all works:
Anyway, enough about how the Volt works. Let’s get into the 2014 trade-in that I got to test-drive.
The thing was in borderline mint condition, and had clearly been beautifully maintained. Well, aside from the broken makeup mirror-cover, which meant that every time I blocked the sun with the visor, I got a direct view of my own crotch. Not ideal.
Anyway, as I got going in the Volt, I noticed that it lacked a backup camera; these didn’t become standard until 2018, though the Volt has an awesome porthole window in its rear hatch that — combined with the lack of a middle rear seat (due to the T-shaped battery that would eat up the legroom) — made this a non-issue.
I also noticed that the car hadn’t been charged, so it was running on the gas engine. This annoyed me, largely because the 1.4-liter four-cylinder just felt unrefined and loud. I had to get the thing to a charger asap. In my search for a charger, I visited LA’s most dangerous EV charger — one located literally in an active lane of traffic, and about eight feet up on a telephone pole. Trying to release that charging cable was a fruitless affair:
I eventually got the Volt charged, and found the driving experience to have been dramatically improved. There’s just something about silence that makes the car feel just right.
Watch the video towards the top of this article to get my full impressions on the first-gen Volt. My main takeaway is that, though I appreciate its engineering, it really doesn’t feel all that special. It’s a Chevy Cruze with an electrified powertrain. The interior is OK, the ride is OK, the styling is OK. It doesn’t feel like the “Car of the Future,” certainly not in comparison to my BMW i3 of the same model-year. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a great, practical machine. I’m a big fan.
I’ll conclude by quoting Bloomberg’s story “Chevy’s Volt and Obama’s Green Legacy”:
When the history books are written about Barack Obama’s tenure as commander in chief, the Chevrolet Volt will doubtless be remembered as the most important car of his presidency. Like selfies, secular stagnation and the Tea Party, General Motors’s plug-in hybrid is inextricably linked with the America of the last seven years.
Like Obama himself, the Volt was cast as a reinvention, a new kind of player that could bridge the gap between zero-emissions electric-car enthusiasts and traditional car buyers. But like candidate Obama’s promise of a post-partisan political order, the Volt’s bold compromise between “green car” innovation and everyday practicality unraveled nearly from its debut in 2010 and only deepened the divides it sought to heal.
[…]
Worst of all, by publicly setting totally unrealistic sales goals in order to lend credibility to a political goal, GM set up the Volt to fail at its most fundamental task: burnishing GM’s credibility as a player in the green-car space.
The Volt deserved better.
These have cult-like following here in the Northern Europe. Many say, that Opel Ampera, as it’s named in here, is in many ways still able to compete with newer offerings. Like the car or not, It was ahead of it’s time, that’s for sure
One thing I always entertained doing was trying to get ahold of an Ampera front clip. I heard the headlights are marginally different between the two, though, which causes fitment issues.
Self Roast Host Post Haste!
petard not required
Hoo boy, between the PHEV talk, the ELR article, and now this, us Volt fans have been eating good lately.
It feels so weird that this was 14 years ago but the Volt was absolutely a political football when it launched. Do y’all not remember the smooth-brained media takes like “you can only drive it 20 miles and then you have to recharge and that takes 12 hours and you’ll die in a snowstorm surrounded by the gnawed corpses of your fellow Donner Party members” from that era? The Volt may as well have been forged in the fires of Mount Doom by Barack Obama himself.
For what it’s worth, I genuinely cared about zero GM products (except for a friend’s Malibu Maxx, perhaps I should have my head examined) before the Volt came along. For the time, the interior was a sorely needed breath of fresh air after decades of increasingly plasticky enshittification, and the silence and torquey thrust of the powertrain legitimately felt like The Future(tm). (I’ve autocrossed it and managed to avoid worst time of the day, even!) I compare the car sometimes to Disney’s Epcot Center or Tomorrowland, in a similar vein of endearing kitschiness/fake-futurism. The interior capacitative controls are legitimately awful but, again, they’re awful in a sort of endearing way (and I’d be unlikely to grant any 2024 design the same benefit of the doubt).
The last thing isn’t really exclusive to the Volt but I will die on this hill: unless you’re transporting perfect one-meter Minecraft cubes on a daily basis, a liftback is the best design for a cargo opening, period. The reason being is that you sacrifice a hatch/wagon’s least-used bit of storage space (that little triangular bit way up at the top-rear) and gain a much more usable loading space. Horizontal space is far more important than vertical IMO.
Anyways! Thank you for all the Volt content lately, lol. Always good to see it. 😉
My favorite of the complaints about the Volt was “It takes premium gas! How is that saving me money?” When I had a Volt I put in 8 gallons, once or twice a month. The extra cost for premium gas was what, $20 a year?
I never could figure out if there were a lot of people that hated the Volt or just two guys that were very, very busy.
I put in 8 gallons maybe once a month with my full-size Ford truck, so I’m not sure what anyone is bothered about.
And the 2nd-gen Volt fixed that. No more premium, plus the extra range dropped that tank or two a month to “mostly only for road trips”
David, thanks for the laugh! That pic of you climbing the pole in a desperate bid for a charge had me holding my sides. Yeah, I know it’s a fake, but what a nice end to my day.
… it wasn’t fake!
It seems like some sort of communist take on the municipal bid for the charger, like the Soviet company that was supposed to make 5 tons of chandeliers in a year so they made one gigantic, useless light fixture. Maybe the had to put the chargers 2 yards away from one another, so they put this on 6 feet in the air? Crazy.
The charger drops down from the box once you authenticate yourself on the panel below.
https://www.eenews.net/articles/the-ev-charger-that-drops-from-the-sky/
Thanks! I never knew that!
Ahh, I Learned something new … but it’s still funny the way you posted that pic.
“The Volt deserved better.”
What really deserved better was the powertrain tech. They should have been applying that tech to all their vehicles. But instead, they only applied it to a couple of other vehicles (the overpriced ELR, the Malibu and the CT6)
As for it being hated, outside of a small vocal minority that hated all things ‘green’ (such as oil industry shills who also hated the Prius), I recall almost everyone singing praises over the Volt.
I had a colleague who leased two of them in the time before they were gone from market; he was rather upset and went to get a Toyota afterwards.
> This drive unit is exceptionally complex
Not a good sign for the long-term reliability of a GM product.
Also what is up with that charger?
I think they actually held up quite well!
What mileage on the one you drove? You’ve made me curious.
The drive unit isn’t complex. Compared to a pure ICE manual drive unit you’re adding an extra motor, generator/motor unit and a clutch, but deleting 5 ratios, the shifter forks, shifter mechanism, synchromesh, the starter motor and it’s ring gear.
Fewer parts and fewer meshing parts wearing out. It only seems complex because it can operate in several modes, mechanically it’s pretty simple.
I’ve seen some pure EV gearboxes with way more complexity: planetary reduction gears with mechanical torque vectoring systems.
Of course the main indicator of whether it’s a reliable power unit or not is if the cam drive on the ICE is a garbage belt or a chain (or gear driven cams, which are better than either).
There are tons of Volts with over 200k on them. Sparky the Volt is north of 500k. They’re quite reliable.
Much like a lot of the other hybrids, I think the complexity is made up for by a combination of low stress on the gas engine and a much simpler transmission. As complex as all that looks, the whole system is simpler than a 6-speed automatic.
I didn’t know this was hated (feels like a strong word). I only read good things about it.
Yeah, I was also completely unaware until this article. Maybe it was out of the news cycle in Alaska where I live, and the hate was stronger in Detroit? My impression has been that the Prius was the poster car for green car hate. I had a Prius for a few years that was keyed for no reason at a trailhead in New Hampshire. . .
The Volt seemed like quite a popular car in some locations. When I was visiting family in San Jose in 2016, there was a short block of a road in their neighborhood that had five Volts in the driveways/garages.
Another voice for this. I’ve heard Prius hate, sure…. but I don’t recall anyone saying bad things about the Volt. (Though, granted, I just never really heard much at ALL about the Volt.)
Yeah, same. There might’ve been a vocal minority but they were already railing against the Leaf, and the Prius before it. I’ve heard almost nothing but good things about the Volt – leading to me getting a 2017. There are some faults, but generally the thing is overengineered because they knew it needed to hit right. Battery degradation? Not much, especially compared to EVs and hybrids of the time. Second gen runs on regular, not premium, gas, and has an even longer EV-only range. I just filled up for the first time since December because I’m driving out to PAX East this weekend.
Rush Limbaugh used to routinely hate this thing and if you were one of his listeners (not I), you heard it constantly. Somehow, he had a ton of listeners so there’s that caste of folks who hated them, just because he did.
Ironically, his hatred of this car and constant harping against it was what made me stop listening to him, and subsequently begin my gradual shift away from the right.
I’m still not what you’d call a bleeding heart liberal, but I for sure have a much more skeptical attitude toward conservative beliefs.
He and his kind perverted what it meant to “be” conservative, so I get what you’re saying. The haters probably didn’t have a clue about how the car worked or what it could be good at, just that the other side liked it so they’d have to hate it regardless.
Maybe he wanted to foment a revolt
Ayyy
Until a few weeks ago, my wife’s daily driver was a 1st gen Volt. We just got her an Audi Q4 e-Tron but kept the Volt to sell privately. My daily driver is a Mk7.5 GTI but it’s been parked for the last couple of weeks while I commute in the Volt. My commute is 18.8 miles one way (freeway + rush hour traffic) and I’ve been making it to work and back with 1 mile to spare. It’s become sort of a game to see if I can beat that (and given what I used today, I may beat it tonight!). In fact, after these last few weeks, I almost don’t want to sell it now. It’s an amazing piece of tech and was so far ahead of its time.
Here’s the main screen from last week, with 1 mile to spare:
https://imgur.com/6zBsNHH
Those Windows Aero era graphics are hilarious
I owned a 2012 Volt and currently own a 2017. They’re absolutely amazing cars that give me the flexibility to drive on electric for my daily driving while also being able to do road trips. Now that charging infrastructure is finally getting up to snuff, that won’t matter so much within the next couple of years, but it’s an amazing car for today and has been fantastic for the 5 years I’ve owned one
I had the exact same MY’s lol. My 2012 and 2017 were both premiums and they really were great commuters. I have a 2022 Hyundai Ioniq 5 now.
The Ioniq 5 is a sweet ride. Unfortunately the head rests give me migraines because they push your head so far forward (I have scoliosis and a herniated disc in my neck so I’m really sensitive to head rest position).
I’m probably going to get a Mach E in the next year or two once the used ones get cheap enough for a tax credit
I hope GM would update it with newer battery chemistry (or just license it to someone who cares, but I guess there is no one with deep enough pocket and volume) instead of sitting on the IP.
Jay Leno had been driving one for a while, so it has to be good, right?
They’ve announced they’re bringing back hybrids so I really hope it’s the Voltec power train. They used it in the Malibu hybrid which got 48 mpg, as well as a Cadillac CT6 plug in.
I’d love a truck with it
I won’t be surprised GM reuses the Voltec brand.. but for trucks especially ones with longitudinal layouts, there are now off the shelf electrical drive component that replaces the traditional torque convertors. Of course unless they do a Maverick competitor. But I question the financial sense from a company standpoint to do a PHEV on low margin vehicle.
The reality is the last decade or so, with crazy amount venture capital piling into EV space, there are a lot of innovation in drive train and battery chemistry that had made into production.
David’s turned so California that he’s posting pictures of his progress in pole-dancing class. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Waiting for the hot yoga tie-in next Trade-In Tuesday.
His stripper name is Tracy Dee
I didn’t know these were hated. I was impressed that The General had looked at the hybrid car and come up with an arguably better solution, at least for the time.
Must not live in red country then, I take it? Culture warriors were really upset about this car.
You would be correct. I do some renewable energy installations. When I found out that solar panels were a right wing bugaboo I was surprised. I didn’t know why anyone would be upset about them.
I did love my 2014 Volt. I had a fully loaded up one, so it did have a backup camera, plus front and rear parking sensors, but you had a pretty basic one. There’s lots of smarts in that car that may have prevented it from charging. It may have been setup to only charge off-peak. You can override that with the “plug” button on the key fob. There’s also a setting to have the car honk when it’s locked if the charger is removed (to discourage theft or unplugging the car.). If you drive it in “L” it has higher regen when off the pedal… Not 1 pedal driving, but close to that.
I think the Volt takes a bit of time to truly appreciate the engineering that went into it. It’s an incredibly well engineered car, but you can’t fully appreciate it until you spend some time with it.
Uhh…these are hated? Typically they’re quite the opposite…
Maybe by mouth-breathing neanderthals who’d impeach someone for wearing a tan suit?
I’m pretty sure that dangerous charger you tried was fake, seeing as it said “prank one” on the top of it.
Also, I never realized these were hatchbacks. For some reason I thought the Volt was a sedan like the Cruze.
GM never stopped using customers as test subjects. Then just when they get everything right, they kill it.
I think it’s mostly because they killed the Cruze that it was based on. Though I don’t understand that decision either. I don’t know how you can sell 110,000 Cruzes and 12,000 Volts in a year and not make any money
That’s the GM way.
But the control panel. My god, what an abomination. I owned one for years and was angry every time I needed to adjust the audio or climate. Just awful. The Volt 2.0 seemed to have it all figured out and then…they stopped making it. Cool cool cool.
Yeah I was going to say something on the last PHEV article about how you made it through the entire thing without mentioning the Volt but I decided not to. This time I’m going to say something because the contempt kind of bakes off of you and I don’t understand it. Widely hated? Are you sure about that?
Saying the i3 feels like the future, when it’s a wildly impractical car that doesn’t work for most people, and Volt doesn’t feel like the future, because it shares some parts with a Cruze is a real choice. One of them can climb a long hill and go 300 miles without stopping for gas, one of them can’t.
I think the trick about getting people used to PHEVs it to make them just work. Like if you remember to plug it in, great – you’re going to enjoy it. If you forget, you’re not screwed and it’s still a car. Make the barriers to entry relatively low. The Volt did that.
Contempt?
There’s no contempt. I dig the Volt, and even decried its passing in my other op-ed.
https://www.theautopian.com/americas-plug-in-hybrids-arent-good-enough/#:~:text=Many%20of%20these%20cars%20don,home%2Dwork%2Dhome%20commute.
The reality is that the Volt just feels a lot more boring than the i3. Its design feels derivative, and that’s obvious to anyone who’s driven both.
But again, I’m pro-Volt!
As a Volt owner, I agree. The design was…okay. Gen 2 was better than Gen 1 (imo), but Volts were also more affordable than the i3, so there is that.
I’m going to disagree. The 1st gen design was very avantgarde and looked like something from the future. The 2nd gen? Meh, it’s just another bubble. All of the character of the 1st gen was gone.
I was referring to your article yesterday https://www.theautopian.com/america-focusing-on-electric-cars-and-not-plug-in-hybrids-was-a-huge-mistake/
…where I did a find and replace in my browser for the word Volt in an article about PHEVs and didn’t find it. I thought that odd.
I’d certainly have mentioned it if it were still for sale. I also didn’t mention any Volvo PHEVs; a few Volvo fans weren’t thrilled about that!
Same for Mercedes, who actually makes PHEVs with really good electric range.
I maintain a voyage of 1,000 miles begins with the 1st step. I propose you can’t get a car if the real future without the many little changes that get us there. If you did people would either have no idea how to operate it or attack it as inoperable because it isn’t easy to operate.
As someone who only saw the Volt and i3 when visiting family in California and didn’t pay attention to either when they came out, I thought the i3 was just one of those ridiculous compliance cars. It had very odd styling, wheels too large/special order tires, short range even with rex, etc. Meanwhile, the first gen Volt looked modern and cool to me, more aerodynamic/sleek. The styling of second gen looked more plain, even if it was a better car. That’s admittedly having never sat in either i3 or Volt.
I didn’t appreciate i3 at all until your recent series of articles. Learning (relearning?) it has a carbon body finally awoke some interest in it for me (as a guy with a materials engineering degree).
The volt is widely hated? TMYK, I guess.
I find the bolt more deserving of ill-will, but mostly because of the poorly-executed taillights and goofy front end on the face-lifted ones. Also unwanted fires aren’t very good.
Not to say the volt is without faults, it’s certainly not (gear selector arch being there just to destroy knuckles as far as I can tell; the awful infotainment system; the dumb black paint mimicking windows and sills fooling exactly no one; yeah those are pretty bad). The guileless deceit about expected range and fuel consumption during development was also not a good look (but not at all surprising, either).
I’m not a fan, nor a hater (and I openly dislike most of gm’s products from the last… 70ish years). Just surprised that such a “meh” vehicle elicits such a reaction, apparently.
Yep, it was a political football!
I’m still unclear on who hated it though. Politicans?
People who didn’t like Obama, and people who didn’t like the bailout.
That explains me not realizing it was hated. I don’t follow football.
Ah, yeah I guess it was, though moreso amongst the “talking heads” than the general population, if memory serves. I kinda remember thinking gm should have tried making more cars like this once they had it production-ready, thoigh it also seemed a bit of a folly getting it production-ready in the first place (much like the NSX and cyberyuck in terms of lengthy gestations).
By that same token, I seem to remember the general thought being that they could/should have been focusing more on better design and interiors and once they were competitive again. By doing that successfully then they’d have money and resources to dedicate to moonshots like the voltec platform. Especially given that at the time their interiors and fit and finish made Fisher-Price look and feel like handcrafted top-end stuff.
My Bolt is the best Daily Driver I have ever had.
The Bolt’s biggest fault though is the world’s most needlessly literal automatic climate control setting. “YOU SAID YOU WANTED 72 AND I AM GOING TO GIVE YOU 72 NO MATTER HOW STUPID I ACT”.
That and the head-killing hatch spikes. But other than those two things, super-awesome.
Hitting the hatch spike is a mistake you only make once (ive made it many times)
Oh man, I thought it was just me. I can’t believe they didn’t fix the hatch spikes with the facelift. I bonked myself on my brand new 2023 this weekend.
Doesn’t GM employ any clumsy goofballs like us?
I chalk it up to the entire Bolt design team being strapping giant ultra-men and ultra-women who are simply too tall to not have these in their field of vision.
I think it’s from them rushing it into production. I can’t see that making it if they had done more testing
I keep hearing the edges of the Bolt hatch are coming for my head as well. I haven’t experienced that yet. I’ve definitely gotten the Volt spike.
What part did you hit on the Volt? I’ve conked my head a couple times just thinking the gate was higher than it was but they don’t really have big protrusions like the Bolt
My Volt stopped hitting my head once I replaced the hatch struts.
We had a 2011 Volt until it was totaled by a guy who rear-ended me in a borrowed car and fled the scene.
The car was great in many ways, felt very premium with comfortable leather seats and performed well. The short electric range really hamstrung the car, and it left us feeling like we had to charge three times a day to get any real efficiency from it. Also, the lack of heat pump was a huge liability in Minnesota, leaving us with maybe 22 miles of EV range in the winter. Once the gas kicked on it buzzed annoyingly. The other couple items that soured us: the damn run flat tires that were too low profile, somehow both the tire and wheel got damaged at one point and the tire cost more than the wheel; and the known issue of electric heaters dying, leaving you with no heat if the gas engine wasn’t running. This last problem really reared its head while waiting 2 hours for the cops to show up after the aforementioned hit and run.
I’d consider getting one again but only the 2nd gen.
I had a 2012 and currently a 2017. The Gen2 is superior in almost every way. The only thing I kind of miss about Gen1 was the exterior looks.
Its a shame that the MkII Volt is so underappreciated, the MkI may be misunderstood, but I think a lot of people aren’t even aware the second generation exists
Hey we are car twins. I also went from a 2012 to a 2017. I got a Bolt too while I was at it
Then we’re extra twins because I have a ’17 Volt and a ’19 Bolt 🙂
I have an interesting story related to the First gen Volt. So…. wayyyyyy back in 2006 GM showed off the very first Volt concept, which looked totally different than the final production car. I was pretty excited about it.Back then GM had a blog and a few people like me would comment on it and when the Volt came out they would make frequent posts about it and many times it was Bob Lutz making the posts. He and others would show incremental progress and sometimes post questions and so on.
I didn’t think much about it until one day a few years later I and a few others on the blog got emails. The email asked if we would be interested in seeing the pre-production Volt. I didn’t think it was real until someone from their said yes, it was real, they would pay the plane flight and hotel fees. So I said yes.
So they flew about 50 of us to Detroit. I was picked up in a Escalade and that evening they took us to a huge building filled with concept cars of the past. I got to see the original Buick Y Job, the original Corvair and a million other iconic cars.
The next day they took us to their design center which was a insane, 1950’s, super-modern looking expanse apparently designed by Harley Earl. We toured the design studios for GMC, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and Buck. We saw clay models of cars that would come out in a few years.
We got to meet and talk to Bob Lutz, Ed Welburn and a bunch of their engineers. And then they drove us to the Milford Proving grounds where we got to see the pre-production volt, which was a mule car based on a Cruz. The whole dash was wired up and it had a big red emergency button to cut the thing off. And then we went home.
Two years later we bought a 2 year old, 2011 volt for cheap. I thought the thing was fucking amazing. It was my first EV and it was so much nicer than any car we had ever owned. Very fast, Very comfortable. We drove the car as a commuter-mobile for years. It did exactly what it was meant for: we charged it at home, drove to work, charged at work, drove it home. Used gas whenever we went on trips. It was easy to maintain because you only needed to change the oil every 2 years since it barely ran. At 150,000 miles the battery started to deteriorate and it was clear the battery would need replacement soon. I wanted to replace the battery which would have been $4,000. But my wife wanted a Subaru. Its ok. But that Volt will always hold a special place ion my heart. When GM tries to do something they really can
That’s an awesome story! For a while I was worried about a G-man and your kidneys though.
Unrealistic sales goals? From the company that, a couple decades earlier, thought it could take 21% of the total passenger car market with its doomed GM10 (AKA W-Body) program? Say it ain’t so!
As for the gen. 1 Chevy Volt itself, I think it was a noble exercise, but many people didn’t like the styling, myself included. It didn’t help that the initial concept looked far sexier (until GM engineers figured out that it had roughly the same Cd as a Hummer H2). The production design was awkward and blocky, and the Cruze with which it shared its platform looked better. Its uptown Cadillac ELR cousin looked a lot prettier, but that was expensive.
The gen. 2 Volt was a lot prettier looking, and is one of those cars that just kind of went about its business quietly. My best friend and his husband bought a 2017 Volt LT (in Pepperdust Metallic Brown) new, so I got a lot of up-close and personal time with one. It was seamless and peppy, and felt more solid and premium than it should have.
I think GM was right to introduce the PHEV tech with the Volt, but should have tried to eventually transition to putting the Voltec powertrain into versions of its other cars, not unlike Toyota did with the Prius. I’m sure plenty of people would appreciate a PHEV Equinox or Terrain, or even an XT5. Interestingly, GM seems poised to do exactly that, since the whole EV thing didn’t exactly work out.
At times I have been tempted to buy a used ELR. However, I do not need 2 Cadillac coupes.
That stupid black plastic shit under the side windows really annoyed me, like GM was obviously too lazy to just make the fucking windows bigger LOL
I always thought that black strip looked terrible as well. Wasn’t it smoked glass on the concept?
Ooo. I haven’t watched the video, but as a happy Gen 2 owner, I am happy you got a taste. The Gen 2 is the only competitor for your i3, and I wouldn’t say it succeeds at all (the i3 is superior in most aspects), but they both at least offer over 50 miles of electric range in the warmer climates.
The Gen2 was the best PHEV that wasn’t called i3.
Seems like Volt batteries have held up a lot better than i3 batteries…
Well, pre-2017 i3 batteries, absolutely!
Ehhhhh early Volts before they did the chemistry update (pre-2013) have been dropping like flies as of late. 2014-2015 still seem to be mostly okay, although a few failures here and there are starting to pop up. Haven’t heard of any failures from a Gen 2 yet, just BECM failures from bad solder joints during manufacturing.
BECM and Shift-to-Park are our own familiar gremlins, particularly for 2016s and 17s. I’ve had the latter taken care of, and live with only a little trepidation at the BECM failing. At least part availability is there now, unlike during COVID where people had to wait for months and months.
I had my BECM go last summer at about 40k miles. Took about 2 weeks and I got a rental. I’m waiting for the PCV valve to die now.
My neighbor has a Honda Clarity PHEV. It’s pretty much a Volt 3.0.
I’d love to hear more about the Clarity. I’m one of the few that likes the way the thing looks – my only beef with it was that despite that kammback body style they gave it a trunk instead of a proper liftback.
I’d argue the newest Prius Prime is the real successor to the Volt line right now. The Clarity did enough things differently that it doesn’t feel like a Volt at all, just a long-range PHEV with an entirely different ethos.